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Re: Carniolan Bees

I've had carniolan bees for many years,and still buy carniolan queens when i buy queens. I do try other breeds of bees once in awhile and catch swarms, so over the years my bees have become mutts. When the carniolans decide to build up they can do it in a hurry, so i keep an eye on them in the spring and when i see it starting i will take 3 or 4 drawn frames from the bottom brood box and replace them with foundation, bees don't like empty frames and will go to work on them and it (sometimes) take their mind off swarming. ( this was an old Richard Taylor trick.)

Re: Carniolan Bees

Originally Posted by brooksbeefarm

When the carniolans decide to build up they can do it in a hurry, so i keep an eye on them in the spring and when i see it starting i will take 3 or 4 drawn frames from the bottom brood box and replace them with foundation

Do you just take any 3 to 4 frames? Which frames do you prefer to take?

Re: Carniolan Bees

Originally Posted by mgolden

Matt, do you use a queen excluder? Or does this sequencing keep enough open egg laying area and a honey barrier, to mostly keep the queen in the brood nest?

No, I don't use queen excluders. When you use foundationless (or even half a frame of foundation works well), the bees make all the drone comb that they want and so have no need to go outside the brood nest. The honey/nectar barrier is the queen excluder.

Re: Carniolan Bees

Originally Posted by lazy shooter

Is the Carniolan bee just a cold weather bee? My real question is: would they survive, or better said, would they prosper in West Texas?

They do prefer the cooler climate. If you look at the colour of feral bees in your area you will see which breed best suites your area. Basically the colder it is, the darker the bee and the hotter it is the lighter the colour of the bee.

They do react well to the available resources. I have seen them eat eggs and young open brood when pollen resources finish in late summer here. This reduces the amount of brood very quickly! Where my Italians tend to continue to try and raise the open brood.

Re: Carniolan Bees

Gus,

You really won't need to worry about checkerboarding for a couple of years. You need extra boxes of drawn comb and capped honey to do it, and starting from scratch it will probably take you a couple of seasons to get to that point.

This coming year your bees will be busy drawing comb, establishing their brood nest, and putting up stores for next winter. They may even draw out a super for you, but I wouldn't really count on it. The Spring of 2014 is when you will need to be vigilant regarding swarm prevention measures. With no extra drawn supers at that point you'll need to be "opening up the broodnest" to prevent backfilling and swarming. Carniolans start out with small clusters in early spring but they just explode in population once they get going. It can get away from you if you are not on top of it. I think that's one of the reasons they have a reputation for being swarmy. Beekeepers underestimate how quickly they build up and are not prepared for it, and swarms are the result.

They should drawn out some extra supers for you in 2014 and then you can plan to checkerboard in late winter/early spring of 2015. You have plenty of time to prepare. This coming year just enjoy watching them build up.

Re: Carniolan Bees

Jackson - I suspect that your Flickr account may not have "Share" permissions set properly to allow direct linking the photo in the manner you first attempted. I had to do it the hard way. Try editing your Flickr permissions and testing it again. You can "Edit" your post above and then use "Go Advanced" then "Preview" to see if it worked. If it isn't what you want, you can just cancel the edit and try again.

Re: Carniolan Bees

When you click on "Share" at Flickr, click the radio button from "HTML" over to "BBCode". Once you copy the code they offer, you can just paste it directly in your Beesource post.

The BBCode that generated the photo link above (and what you should copy) looks like this when you have the Flickr options selected correctly:

[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/custom888/10558213513/"][IMG]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5531/10558213513_c594610231.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/custom888/10558213513/"]two types of melli[/URL] by [URL="http://www.flickr.com/people/custom888/"]custom888[/URL], on Flickr

Note the ".jpg" towards the end of the second line above. That is a clue that you are linking to a linkable photo, and not what Flickr offered in the original post. Forums like Beesource almost always want BBCode, not HTML code.

The second line in the BBCode above is the only code actually required to post that photo here. The other 3 lines are your caption, code that makes the photo a clickable link to your Flickr account, and a commercial that Flickr throws in just because they can.

Re: Carniolan Bees

Originally Posted by Gus979

My first two packages are coming from the milwaukee-wauwatosa beekeeping association. They are getting the carniolan packages from Ray Olivarez. Should I be worried about having Carniolans as a beginning beekeeper?

I had figured as long as I did some amateurish checkerboarding in early spring the next year it wouldn't be too big a deal- but I've read stories of multiple swarms in a year. I suppose I could always really enjoy the splits and then requeen them with italians...but it sounds kind of dissapointing to me. Is this race really that hard the manage with swarming?

What I don't understand about honey bee genetics is why the big breeders haven't been able to remove the genetic likelyhood of traits like swarming. Why don't we have gentle african honey bees, non-swarmy carniolans, honey making caucasians and morally upstanding italians?

I started with carniolans, and no problems there. In fact, I'd say that you risk less as a new beekeeper than an experienced one does, because you don't have the habits and expectations that someone who has only used italians has. Same goes with russians, I'd reckon. Each breed has their own specificities, which you must respect. If you all you ever had was italians, and you finally decide to get carniolans, but you treat them like italians... odds are you'll have some problems, and you'll complain to others about how bad carniolans are. The opposite would be just as true.

I personally don't feel that any race of Apis mellifera is inferior to any of the others. It's all a question of how well your practices are adapted to your breeds, or how your breeds are adapted to your practices. Some people will rate bees according to their honey yields... I would consider this to be a mistake. Is A. m. caucasica inferior to A. m. ligustica because it yields less honey...? If you compare the market value of honey and propolis, and factor in how caucasica are heavy propolisers, I'd have a really hard time accepting that caucasica is inferior to ligustica just because it makes a bit less honey.

Just be sure to give your bees room. Carnies are more prone to swarming, so don't let them beard as much as you would with italians.

Re: Carniolan Bees

When you click on "Share" at Flickr, click the radio button from "HTML" over to "BBCode". Once you copy the code they offer, you can just paste it directly in your Beesource post.

The BBCode that generated the photo link above (and what you should copy) looks like this when you have the Flickr options selected correctly:

[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/custom888/10558213513/"][IMG]http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5531/10558213513_c594610231.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/custom888/10558213513/"]two types of melli[/URL] by [URL="http://www.flickr.com/people/custom888/"]custom888[/URL], on Flickr

Note the ".jpg" towards the end of the second line above. That is a clue that you are linking to a linkable photo, and not what Flickr offered in the original post. Forums like Beesource almost always want BBCode, not HTML code.

The second line in the BBCode above is the only code actually required to post that photo here. The other 3 lines are your caption, code that makes the photo a clickable link to your Flickr account, and a commercial that Flickr throws in just because they can.

Note that I removed the [/URL] closing code from the end of line 2 to make it all work.

More info on how BBCode works is available at the BBCode link at the very bottom of every forum thread page.

Hard to say because most of the bees aren't in focus, but these mostly look like carnies to me, except for that incoming bee on the top-right that looks rather italian. Without being able to take any measures here, I find that both the colors and the patterns differ between the two races, carnicas appearing, to me at least, as both more greyish and more uniform, whereas italians are brighter but have more different shades. Matt's italian example is not really representative, in my opinion, because these are cordovan italians, and (at least over here) most italians lack that cordovan trait.

Something to keep in mind, though, is that all of our bees are mutts, some just less than others.